2019 is the first year the concert engagement is offered as part of the grand prize for the piano festival, which began in 2015. The festival typically brings in more than 100 entries from around the world, with more than 20 pianists selected as finalists coming to Morgantown for the competition.
“We are quite certain that this partnership will bring great benefit to the Morgantown cultural community,” said Ching-Wen Hsiao, assistant professor of piano at WVU. “It will help grow the international reputation of the competition, the WVU School of Music and help to further establish Morgantown as a vibrant center of music.”
The piano festival takes place in March, and the winner’s concert performance will be scheduled later in the same year. These concerts, part of WVU’s Discovery Series of events, are free and open to the public.
The first concert in the partnership is 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Creative Arts Center in Morgantown. Zhiye Lin, a graduate student at The Juilliard School and winner of the 2019 West Virginia International Piano Competition, will perform Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. The concert, directed by Mitchell Arnold, will also feature Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture and a new work, Disfiguration, by WVU student composer and violist Andre Magalhaes.
For more information, visit symphony.wvu.edu or http://bit.ly/wvupiano.